probationary state, it might be natuaal enough to inquire how we came to be placed in it. This curiosity, however, can never be satisfied, as it is directed to a subject which we are not competent to understand, without much higher degrees of knowledge and capacity. "Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth! Shall the clay say unto him that fashioneth him, What maketh thou? or thy work, He hath no hands?" If we make the question, "What is your business here?" which must be acknowledged to be a frame of inquiry more important, as it is more humble; not only religion affords us an answer, but a view of the course of the world in which we live will convince us that our present condition is no way inconsistent with the perfect moral government of God. If our religion teach us that we are placed here in a state of so much hazard and affliction for our improvement in virtue and piety, as the requisite qualification for a future state of happiness and security, we shall also find, upon inquiry, that the same plan and the same gradation is observed in the conduct of nature, and the rest of God's government and dispensations.

We must again consider man under a religious and temporal capacity; and in this double view of him, the beginning of life, considered as an education for mature age, appears plainly at first sight analogous to our general trial for a future life. This analogy may be pushed to a great extent, and is certainly well worth the pains of investigation.

To be capable of enjoying any state of existence, we must have a frame of mind within us correspondent to the order of things around us. Without determining what will be the employment and the hap

piness of good men hereafter, we may be sure that some determinate qualities and capacities will be necessary to render them susceptible of their external condition, and the objects that surround them. Now it is the property of man to be able to mould and accommodate himself to states of life for which he was once wholly unqualified. This gradual rise in the human character, this insensible and subtle transformation, is affected through the medium of habits. Habit has a wonderful rule in human affairs; it consecrates and preserves all our acquisitions, whether moral or intellectual; and memory itself is little else than habitual knowledge. There are passive as well as active habits; and the mind, long accustomed to expand to the treasures of wisdom, affords them an easy entrance, and a safe repository. Passive ha

bits and active habits, in respect to each other, proceed in an inverse ratio. Active habits gradually receive confirmation and permanency through a course of acting upon certain motives and incitements, or passive impressions; while these motives and incitements themselves, by proportionate degrees, become less and less sensible to ourselves; that is, become continually less sensibly felt, as the active habits acquire strength and consistency. The inference to be drawn from these considerations, is plainly, that these passive impressions, which may be made on our minds, by experience, admonition, and example, though they have a strong remote efficacy, and conduce to the formation of active habits, yet, unless they do really succeed in forming these active habits, they will have no efficacy at all, but will expire in repetition.

Without this process and agency of habit, nature alone is insufficient to qualify us ultimately, much

less at once, for a mature state of life. Maturity of understanding, and perfection of bodily strength, are not only attained to by degrees, but depend also on the continued exercise of the powers, both of the mind and body, from the age of infancy. If we suppose a person brought into the world with his powers of mind and body complete, he must plainly be distracted with astonishment, curiosity, and suspense, and be totally unfit for the sphere in which he is called to exert himself: nor is it probable that his senses of seeing and hearing, would be of any practical benefit to him, before experience had taught their use and advantages. It is evident he would be destitute of that moderation, forbearance, and selfgovernment, which the habits of education and discipline inculcate.

Thus then the beginning of our days is intended to be, and really is, a state of education to the theory and practice of mature life; and this is a providential disposition of things, in regard to the objects of this present existence, to which that supposed discipline which we undergo in this world, as a preparation for the next, is perfectly analogous. Nor are those objections at all solid which are grounded on our inability to discern in what way the present life can be a preparation for another; for children are perfectly ignorant how they contribute to their health and growth by the sports and exercises to which they are instinctively addicted. But our state in this world is not merely such as to afford frequent opportunities of exercising our virtuous principles, but holds out to us the constant necessity of an unwearied circumspection and preseverance, that thus our virtue may be rendered in a manner more intense, and a more confirmed habit may be the consequence :

and this wakeful and continued exertion of the moral sense, is calculated to give it a certain supremacy in our minds, however the momentary sallies of passion may sometimes disturb its reign.

It may possibly be objected that the present state is so far from proving in reality a discipline of virtue to the generality of men, that on the contrary they appear to make it a discipline of vice. It is true the generality of us do not gather much improvement in our passage through life; but this can never be urged as a proof that it was not intended as a state of moral discipline, if we at all consider the analogy of nature. Of that infinite number of seeds of vegetables, and bodies of animals, which are furnished with an organization and disposition to arrive at maturity and perfection, perhaps not one in a million does actually reach that period of its destination.

If again it be objected that nothing but afflictions and crosses can exercise or demand the virtues of resignation and content; that therefore they will not be necessary to a condition of perfect repose, and consequently cannot be exerted in this life with any view to a future one; we must again resort to experience and analogy for the answer. In the course of this world we do not find that our trial ceases when we are arrived at the consummation of our fortunes. Prosperity itself begets unbounded desires, and out of our own imagination there springs as much discontent as from any thing in our external condition. We must carry therefore to this state of worldly advancement a mind exercised to forbearance, by frequent disappointment, in order to profit by our elevation; and this very elevatión is a source of new trials by which our principles are kept alert,

and our habits maintained in activity. It is true indeed there can be no scope for patience, when sorrow and trouble shall be no more; but there may be need of a temper, which shall have been formed by patience; there may be need of a bland conformation of mind, an uniform spirit of meek contentment, such as acquaintance with sorrow and affliction has a tendency to produce.

But some men may suppose that all which has been here advanced, must fall before the doctrine of necessity. It is not to the present purpose to demonstrate the absurdity of that doctrine: it will be enough to prove that it furnishes no conclusions inimical to what has been argued on the question of God's moral government, and a state of probation. If this word necessity, in the minds of those who maintain it, have any definable meaning, it must mean something that does not exclude deliberation, counsel, choice, and preference; for this is a matter of undoubted experience, and of which we are conscious at every moment of our lives. It is equally clear that necessity does not pretend to account for the origin and continuance of things, and maintains nothing further than that they could not have been otherwise than they are.

If a fatalist, and one who believed himself a free agent, were disputing about the origin of a house, they would both agree that it was built by an architect; their only difference would be on this question, whether the architect built it freely, or by necessity. Suppose then, that they should proceed to inquire into the constitution of nature, and that, in a lax way of speaking, one of them were to say that it was by necessity, and the other by freedom. Now if they have any meaning in those words, as the latter musé